


(Para Siempre) Jamás

by CoralFlowerDaylight (CoralFlower)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bruce Banner Angst, Bruce Banner Character Study, Bruce Banner Feels, Bruce Banner-centric, Character Study, F/M, POV Bruce Banner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:20:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23728948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoralFlower/pseuds/CoralFlowerDaylight
Summary: "Nick Fury seems to trust you." Nick Fury seems to be an asshole. "But now we need you to come in."And she's so picturesque, so well-slotted into the role she's playing that it's easy for Bruce to make her body into an object in his mind, if he decides to, as if it's a doll to be posed and played with, and the real Natasha Romanov is an invisible giant watching the scene and reaching into the dollhouse with a ghostly hand to tilt the doll's head and make it quirk an eyebrow at him.-aka i wanted to explore that whole "always angry" thing so i wrote this to do it
Relationships: (subtext and crush), Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 13
Kudos: 34





	(Para Siempre) Jamás

**Author's Note:**

> i read a fic where bruce's pov wasnt full of constant irritation at little things and it felt wrong so i wrote this to cleanse my palette. enjoy. ive only seen like 5 mcu movies so dont expect perfect backstory stuff here lol
> 
> title notes - jamás is the stronger form of never in spanish (and it sometimes implies a decision like "i will never buy anything from apple" whereas the other word for never is more passive as in "i've never bought anything from apple") but its also used in the phrase "para siempre jamás" which means "forever and ever" so like. basically it's abt bruce's determination to never hurt anyone again and also a reference to him always being angry. spanish isnt my native language but im _pretty_ sure this works as a title XD the whole phrase may or may not have romantic connotations but that works for me either way since natasha and bruce are super shippable

Even before, Bruce was always angry. Emotional background noise, like the quiet hum of air conditioning or the soft _hhhhh_ of simply breathing. He didn't handle it well.

After... Well, hiding in India there was plenty to be angry about. He got better at handling it.

So yeah, he's always angry. Why shouldn't he be? He's got a lot to be angry about. Which is why, when he follows a little girl out to the edge of the city and into a house only for her to crawl out the window, he doesn't flinch as he feels the anger surge. He just huffs out a sigh.

"Should've gotten paid up front, Banner," he mutters to himself, hands rubbing together. He doesn't like taking money up front, though, because then if he can't help he has to give it back, and that's just awkward. He especially hates taking money from kids. But this little girl didn't offer him her only funds, she offered him someone else's money, and the anger Bruce feels at that buzzes gently against his skull like a tree trunk getting sawed through. It's nothing.

"You know," says a soft voice, feminine, an interesting choice to send in fragility to get him. "For someone who's supposed to be avoiding stress, you picked a hell of a place to settle."

She comes out, shoulders visible, neck exposed, unarmoured, and the anger latches onto her appearance. He's annoyed they'd send this lady after him, with her curled hair and delicate face and fucking necklace, and he knows it's a ploy to make him unwilling to fight her. It's whatever. Her lack of obvious physical strength means she does have physical strength, but it kind of makes him think she must have some kind of science-related way she thinks she can put him down. God, he hopes she doesn't try morphine. And her little smirk--

"Avoiding stress isn't the secret," he says mildly, taking his bag off his shoulders and setting it down. He doesn't want the straps broken if it turns out she's here to stab him with a needle.

"Then what is it?" she says, tilting her head. "Yoga?"

The banter is unusual. Bruce wants it to be over, wants to get to the point.

"You brought me to the edge of the city, smart," he comments, glad at least that it's not a plan that involves making him lose it in a populated area. He hopes that the little spyling is far enough out of the way. He peeks out the window. "I, uh. I assume the whole place is surrounded?"

"Just you and me," the woman says, tossing her shawl to the side to reveal more of those smooth arms, meaning whoever sent her must have great doctors and pay them a lot to keep her from scarring, because Bruce can tell she's a fighter from the way she moves, and Bruce knows she's lying from the way she looks at him as she says it and also just from basic fucking logic. It pisses him off, the way she thinks--

"And your actress buddy... she a spy too, they start that young?"

\--children, that was a _child_ they sent in after him and the thought they might've kept her nearby makes the anger turn cold like ethanol on skin because--

"I did."

\--and she's so nonchalant, it makes Bruce sick, as if her experience justifies putting another kid through it, or at least that's what she wants him to think but he can tell now that the girl was just some girl they paid to get him out here, probably she has a real sick relative they used as insurance she wouldn't run with the money, probably father because that didn't strike Bruce as a lie, and this lady is willing to pretend she thinks it would have been okay to abuse a little girl into going after him--

"Who are you?"

\--and you know what? Bruce is getting real annoyed with whoever these people are for putting two girls in harm's way on the off-chance he'll be less willing to hurt them, as if he's any more fucked if a woman sets him off than anyone else, as if he doesn't know enough of ethics to blame the one who sent them his way in the first place--

"Natasha Romanov."

\--like the other guy will hesitate slightly longer to crush the skull of a woman, a child, than a grown man--

"Are you here--" like Bruce hasn't met-known-loved enough women to see Romanov as other-than-harmless-- "to kill me--" like he's going to let her close enough to inject something just because she's stunningly beautiful, oh, her eyes and the shape of her nose-- "Miss Romanov?" --draw his eyes in like a magnet, but he knows by now not to dwell on womanly beauty if he can't handle getting angrier, and he figures now isn't the time to risk it, gorgeous though she is-- "Because that's--" even though Bruce can imagine her soft skin under his fingers as he lets his hands do their nervous little tic-- "not gonna work out--" even though Bruce thinks he'd like seeing those eyelids flutter in pleasure-- "for everyone."

Immediate response. Bruce notices Natasha is in heels as she steps forward and her balance is too good for her not to have combat experience.

"No no, of course not--" oh of course of course, she says of course like it's at all a given and it makes Bruce's very teeth ache to grind against one another _(of course of course of course of course of course)_ \-- "I'm here on behalf of Shield."

"Shield." Bruce looks away, angry with whatever villain picked the name for wasting such a beautiful lady fighter on a fruitless-- wait no, that's not Shield like a name, it's SHIELD the abbreviation, the organisation. "How they find me?"

It has been a year, a whole year since the last time--

"We never lost you, Doctor," never. Never once. Which means Bruce was never alone or free or safe or hidden, not really, and everyone he's helped was actually put at risk, because at any moment these assholes could have-- "We've kept our distance, even helped keep some other interested parties off your scent."

Which is so unspecific it doesn't sway Bruce for a moment.

"Why."

"Nick Fury seems to trust you." Nick Fury seems to be an asshole. "But now we need you to come in."

And she's so picturesque, so well-slotted into the role she's playing that it's easy for Bruce to make her body into an object in his mind, if he decides to, as if it's a doll to be posed and played with, and the real Natasha Romanov is an invisible giant watching the scene and reaching into the dollhouse with a ghostly hand to tilt the doll's head and make it quirk an eyebrow at him.

"What if I say no."

This is the important question.

"I'll persuade you."

And now she smirks. He has to look down because the sight of her is too much for comfort; he hasn't quite ruled out the idea that she's here to shoot something into his veins, so he needs to keep cooler than he usually would in case that happens. The anger tries to claw its way out of Bruce's mouth and he lets it out in a whisper of breath, quiet and unassuming, as he slides his tongue over the inside of his lower lip to poke at a crack in the dry skin. The pain pulls him back into focus and makes the Other Guy grumble. 

"And what if the..." He looks back up. "...Other Guy says no."

"You've been more than a year without an incident," as if Bruce hasn't noticed, "I don't think you wanna break that streak."

The doll is turned away to cross the room, and Bruce follows idly, anger doubled like paper folded in half, and this Natasha sure is something if she can fold his emotions instead of crumpling them the way everyone else tries to. Crumpling, you get somewhere fast, but can't get far enough. Folding, the size doubles and doubles and doubles until suddenly it's too much to bend any further and the only way to go on is to make something tear. It doesn't happen when you crumple; all that does is weaken the paper.

He touches a roughly built cradle, (irrationally) angry that it hasn't been sanded around the edges, and pushes it to let it rock back, curious to see how smooth the action is. It doesn't make a creaking sound, just a rough woody noise.

"Well," he says, looking at the patterned blankets and wondering if the ghost in the shell of a woman across the room from him has ever felt the way he does right now. But it's pointless to try and relate. Bruce is angry at the children he'll never have for not existing, for not being here to get a splinter on the roughly hewn wooden rail of this cradle. If they did, he'd put a salve and a bandaid on it and go at it with tweezers in the morning if the salve didn't pull it out, and not show a moment of anger at any of it. Bruce is angry he'll never get that chance, never get to raise a child to be gentle and kind, never teach a son or daughter to burn with anger and use that light to illuminate a smile. "I don't everytime get what I want."

"Doctor we're facing a potential global catastro- _she has something in her hands now_ and Bruce's heart leaps into his throat as the anger surges and the Other Guy makes a real try at coming out but it's not shaped like a needle and she's not walking towards him so it isn't even that hard to breathe through the anger and reassert his control at the new water level, swim back up to the surface and keep treading so he doesn't drown. Treading water is always the same no matter how deep the ocean is. Bruce is certain that if he ever got angry slowly, he could get _really_ angry and still be himself. It's the sudden changes that are really impossible. He's got this. He chuckles, not really taking her seriously, because anyone can tell any lie they want if they think it'll make him walk into a warzone.

"Oh, those I _actively_ try to avoid."

The epidemic in India is only a national catastrophe, don't @ him. What? Bruce has used social media, he knows the lingo.

"This," Natasha says, setting her glowing thing on a table and sliding it across as she sits down. "Is the tesseract." Bruce gets his glasses out of his front pocket and walks over to look. "It has the potential energy to wipe out the planet."

He puts his glasses on, preoccupied both by the vague unscientificity of that statement and the fact Natasha just said _potential_ twice in less than a minute like a high-schooler who's shit at writing essays. Irritating.

So he doesn't think twice before he picks up the phone, but it doesn't poke needles into his fingers or blow up, so he figures it's fine to keep holding and looks at the blue cube, which is a cube and not a tesseract, but it's whatever.

"What does Fury want _me_ to do, swallow it?"

"He wants you to find it." What. "It's been taken." Surely not. "It emits a gamma signature--" more vague unscience-- "that's too weak for us to trace. There's no one that knows gamma radiation like you do." That's one way to put it. Natasha leans back. "If there was--" Bruce would've gone to them for help ages ago. "That's where I'd be."

Bruce smells bullshit. He's been tired of the lies since the conversation began, and as he takes his glasses back off, he wonders when Natasha will finally decide it's enough.

"So Fury isn't after the monster."

"Not that he's told me."

Vague enough it's practically a nonstatement, will Natasha quit playing with him and give him some fucking information for a change?

"And he tells you everything," it's petty and just as void of information as what Natasha just said, but Bruce lets it slip out anyway because if he wants to end this conversation he has to look like he's less in control. She takes a moment to keep talking, sitting up as she says,

"Talk to Fury, he needs you on this."

Time for the bait.

"He needs me in a cage?"

Natasha leans forwards across the table placatingly and Bruce gets ready to drop the real test.

"No one's gonna put you in a--"

Bruce listens carefully as he slams his hands on the table.

" _Stop lying to me._ "

Movement outside the house. When his focus returns to his sight he's surprised to see the gun pointed at his face, and behind the gun, the beautiful woman with eyes shining in fear, and it's the most beautiful she's been all night because it's honest, even if he feels fucking sleazy to look at that terror and find it hotter than the smile she gave him. Any emotion would've done it, though, it's not specifically the fear. Maybe he'll get a real smile out of her someday too. And maybe someday the world will decide it's tired of war. And maybe someday he and the Other Guy will just chill together and he won't have to worry anymore.

"I'm sorry," he says, annoyed he has to say it, but even more annoyed he was right from the start. He stands up straight again and wonders if she'll admit it. Natasha is trembling, no longer a doll but a real fucking person, and that's the thing that really makes her interesting now instead of just annoying. Now, she's both. "That was mean."

It was funny too, though.

"I just wanted to see what you'd do," he tells her, because really, he's a scientist, and the window was open even though it's actually cooler tonight than usual and the temperature in the house is perfectly comfortable. Someone had to be out there listening.

She's still afraid, and oh fuck, fuck, wait, no, he yelled and now she's--

The anger is sudden and slick like oil on the waves, so easy to set alight so he has to drown rather than burn alive, because it's self-directed this time. He shouldn't have done that and he really is sorry now because it wasn't just 'mean :(' it was _mean_. And now she has a gun pointed at him and if she fires that'll be it. The Other Guy will come out.

"Why don't we," he begins, mirroring Natasha's movements before he shouted as he raises his hands placatingly, "do this the easy way where you don't use that--" her grip gets firmer-- "and the Other Guy doesn't make a mess. Okay?"

Is she holding her breath?

"Natasha."

He waits, hating himself, and after a few moments her lips part (his breath _catches_ , hard, something goes twisty in his stomach) as she lowers the gun and lifts a hand to tuck her hair--

No. Not to tuck her hair out of her eyes, because it goes to her ear instead and she says,

"Stand down." Noise from outside, safeties being clicked back on. "We're good here."

Well, that's a lovely surprise. Some actual truth from the hot lady who just pointed a gun at him.

"Just you and me," Bruce can't resist saying, and Natasha glares at him as she lets her hand drop.

**Author's Note:**

> commentttt
> 
> even if ur just pasting in ur fave lines thats good feedback


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